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Here's what a 'teardown' expert has to say about Tesla Model 3 build quality

Benchmarking specialist Munro & Associates has a few bones to pick with this electric sedan

February 6, 2018

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Munro & Associates, Inc. is not a company you've probably heard of unless you work in the engineering department of a major automaker, but this Detroit-based specialty engineering consultancy has a very specific niche: tearing down new cars to find out how -- and how well -- they're made. And when we say tearing down, we really mean it. Munro slices and drills into parts to see what's inside, inspecting the materials, engineering and build processes. Their clients are the automakers themselves, who pay Munro to figure out just how their competitors are building the latest models and what lurks beneath the bodywork.

Even though the Tesla Model 3 is a bit of tough car to get your hands on these days, Munro secured an example to see how it's built.

The Tesla Model 3, the car that is going to bring Tesla technology to the masses, is finally here. It is not here as in “in press fleets across America,” but it is sitting in the driveways ...

Autoline’s John McElroy got a chance to go over the Model 3 in question with Sandy Munro, the CEO of the company, just before it was taken apart, and let's just say Munro has a new nitpicks about the engineering choices made by Tesla. But he saves the most brutal zingers for the panel gaps -- an issue that we've heard about ever since the first examples of the electric sedan started rolling out of the factory.

"If we look over here I can barely get my fingernail in," Munro says. "And then we look over here, I can almost put my thumb in. This is, this is very unusual; the stackups, the tolerance stackups on this car are just like nothing we've ever seen before. Not since, like I say, the '70s or something. I don't, I don't understand how it got to this point. I mean, these are, these are flaws that we would see on a Kia in the '90s or something."

Munro is clearly not among those who overpaid an eBay scalper for one of the butane torches rebranded as The Boring Company Flamethrowers; his clients are mostly automakers of the gasoline and diesel persuasion who have been around a little longer than Tesla.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk fully predicted the "production hell" the company would endure this year, signaling months earlier it would be a make-or-break moment for the electric automaker. But a ...

Opinions on Munro's take will surely be split down partisan lines as the Teslarati point out that Model 3s are still early examples while EV skeptics might point to the fact that each Model 3 spends quite a lot of time at the factory, which should theoretically allow Tesla to fix some fit and finish issues in these early cars. We should also note that our own Mark Vaughn spent time in an early Model 3 and found his example to be both a delightful driver and reasonably well screwed together.

The biggest question now (aside from whether Tesla will hit the delayed production targets by the end of Q2 2018) is whether the widely-reported quality control issues affecting some Model 3s will dampen buyer enthusiasm. So far they haven't, but then again Tesla is only about a few thousand cars into production after seven months, so a wider consensus will take time to develop.

Does Munro have a point in this brief walkaround, or are these obscure nitpicks? Let us know in the comments below.

The National Transportation Safety Board will conduct an investigation into a crash involving a Tesla Model S and a fire truck that took place on a freeway in the Los Angeles area earlier this week. ...